Gabriel Chevallier - Fear

If the Son of God exists, it is at the moment when he bares his heart, while so many hearts are bleeding — that heart so full of love for man. Was it all to no purpose, had his Father sacrificed him pointlessly? The God of infinite mercy cannot be the God of the plains of Artois. The good God, the just God, could not have allowed such bloody carnage to be carried out in His name, could not have wanted such destruction of bodies and minds to further his glory.

God? Come off it, the heavens are empty, as empty as a corpse. There’s nothing in the sky but shells and all the other murderous devices made by men…

This war has killed God, too.

The nurses leave the ward between noon and two o’clock, after our lunch. To avoid the embarrassment of relieving ourselves in their presence, we have regulated our bodily functions so that — unless it’s unavoidable — they are only exercised in that period. The only job of the male army nurse who covers for them is to remove the bedpans. Those waiting for him to come look at the ceiling and smoke energetically to dispel the odour. Once the big rush is over and we no longer risk catching cold, we open the windows. Winter sunlight pours into the ward and we let it trickle between our hands, pale with idleness, so that they acquire a faint flush of pink.

Someone had given this male nurse the cruel surname of Caca. I know this name upsets him, know it because I knew André Charlet before the war, at university, where he was one of the star students, bursting with curiosity and ideas. In student reviews he published some brilliant sonnets, which represented life as a vast field of conquests, a heavenly forest full of surprises, into which ventured great explorers who brought back amazing fruit with unfamiliar tastes, women of savage beauty, and a thousand barbaric objects of refined savagery. When the mobilisation began he was one of the first to join up and he was severely wounded the following year.

Now I found him here, broken, drained, and dirty. A few months of war had brought about this metamorphosis, given him this agitated manner, emaciated body and yellow skin. It has left him with the mad terror that you can see behind his eyes. So that he could stay in the hospital he accepted this job and the disgusting duties that go with it. By being Caca, he gets to spend an extra three months in hospital, through some military decision or other allowing medical staff to take on temporary assistants. If he hadn’t done this he would most likely have joined the auxiliaries unless he’d been declared unfit for service altogether. But he doesn’t want to go before a panel except as a last resort for he isn’t convinced that his health has been sufficiently ruined to exempt him from returning to front-line duty. He is alone in doubting it; we believe he is likely to die from tuberculosis, more infallible than shells.

I try to win him round, recalling our adolescent years together, our friends, our happiness, our former ambitions. But I cannot interest him. He smiles weakly and says: ‘It’s all over!’

‘And what about poetry, old pal?’ I reply.

He shrugs his shoulders: ‘Poetry is like glory!’, then leaves because someone is calling him. A moment later he returns with steaming bedpan, turns his head away in utter disgust, and sneers: ‘There you are, poetry!’

Among his memories of the war, this one is truly appalling:

‘It was in the eastern zone, end of August. Our battalion attacks with bayonets. You have no idea how idiotic those first assaults were, what a massacre. What distinguished that period without a doubt was the incompetence of our leaders — and they were sometimes victims themselves. They had been taught that battles were decided by the infantry, and cold steel. They didn’t have the faintest idea about the effects of modern weaponry, of artillery and machine guns, and their big hobby horse was Napoleonic strategy — nothing new since Marengo! We were under attack and instead of establishing solid positions, we were scattered across the plains, unprotected, wearing uniforms straight out of a circus and then ordered to charge at forests, from 500 metres. The Boche picked us off like rabbits and then, once they’d done all the damage they could, they fled when we got close enough for hand-to-hand fighting. Finally on that particular day, having lost half our men, we managed to drive them out. But the bastards had a diabolical idea. There was a strong wind blowing against us and they set fire to the cornfields from which we were chasing them… What I saw there was a vision of hell! Four hundred wounded men, lying still on the ground, suddenly bitten and revived by the flames, four hundred turned into human torches, trying to run on broken limbs, waving their arms and screaming like the damned. Their hair went straight up in flames, like tongues of fire on the head of the Holy Ghost, and the cartridges they had in their belts exploded. We were struck dumb, unable to think of taking cover, as we watched four hundred of our comrades sizzling and twisting and rolling in this inferno, swept by machine-gun fire, unable to reach them. I saw one stand up as the wave of fire approached him and shoot his neighbours to spare them this horrible death. And then several of them, about to be engulfed by the flames, began screaming to us: “Shoot us, pals, shoot us!” and maybe some of us had that terrible courage… And Ypres! The night battles at Ypres. You didn’t know who you were killing, who was killing you. Our colonel had told us: “Treat prisoners well, my children, but don’t take any .” The people we were facing had surely been given the same instructions.’

‘But look, the worst is over, old pal. We’ll soon be back in civilian life, and we’ll return to what we were doing before.’

‘No, it won’t be like before. That’s not possible. The war has diminished me. You knew me at university, you know my fellow students had me marked out as someone who would stand out in our generation, our teachers had faith in me, and men of distinction had already honoured me. I dreamed of a glittering career as a leader of men, at least an intellectual leader, but I also believed that my body was capable of serving my ideas. Now I’ve seen that my body is just an old rag, a straw in the wind; it’s a deserter and it’s taken me with it… A chap who shakes with fear cannot be a leader.’

‘But we have all shaken with fear!’

‘Not all. You remember Morlaix, that dolt who spent his life in bars with dubious women, who got ill at the very thought of opening a book, and whom we held in utter contempt? He’s already a sub-lieutenant. He was completely in control at the front, incredibly plucky. To give you some idea — at the time when the trenches still weren’t continuous, in a new sector, we were coming back with provisions through a foggy night. You couldn’t see more than three metres ahead. So of course we get lost and we end up floundering around in some kind of swamp, going around in circles like we were blindfolded, hampered by the supplies we were carrying and unarmed. Morlaix decides what to do: “Go straight ahead, we’ll see where we get!” So we march on and on, in silence… A shout makes us freeze: “Wer da?” We’ve walked straight into the German sentries. Now, listen to this, Morlaix has a pack full of hard-boiled eggs. Quick as a flash he chucks three of them ahead of him. Hearing them land, in the dark, the Boche thought they were grenades and fled. I could never keep my cool like that…’

‘You have other qualities. The fact that a brute may be briefly useful on a battlefield doesn’t prove anything against the life of the mind, quite the contrary. A man who creates is worth more than a man who kills.’

‘I can’t accept that a man can be incomplete, that he can show himself inferior in certain aspects of the game. In the war, I was a disaster. I cannot forget it.’